When you enable Active Directory Recycle Bin, all link-valued and non-link-valued attributes of the deleted Active Directory objects are preserved and the objects are restored in their entirety to the same consistent logical state that they were in immediately before deletion. For example, restored user accounts automatically regain all group memberships and corresponding access rights that they had immediately before deletion, within and across domains.

Many people have been looking for a simplified GUI to restore deleted objects which is now available in windows Server 8 Beta.

In this post we will walkthrough configuring Active Directory recycle bin, deleting and recovering a test user.

Environment details:

Domain controller: DC01

AD Domain name: xyz.local

AD Forest and Domain Functional level: Windows Server 8 Beta

Test user: test01

To enable Active Directory Recycle Bin using the Enable-ADOptionalFeature cmdlet

Important note:

To enable Active Directory Recycle bin the AD forest functional level has to be Windows Server 2008 R2 or later.